The Pandora's Box of Talayotic Menorca is opened

CitadelMenorca's monumental heritage hasn't been declared a World Heritage Site for two years, and its declaration is already being questioned. The expert who coordinated its nomination, Cipriano Marín; the director of the Menorca Talayotic Agency, Antoni Ferrer, and Mónica Luengo, the driving force behind the World Heritage declaration of Prado and El Retiro Park in Madrid, have resigned. Even the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has had to speak out and warn: international recognition is in danger. The change of government in the Island Council has once again modified the road model and, consequently, the order of priorities has also been altered. Road safety has been used as an argument over heritage protection, so the half-finished bridge that was supposed to be demolished around the prehistoric navetas of Rafal Rubí will now be built, thus ignoring UNESCO's recommendation. Nine organizations on the island have also contacted the government, but, despite the uproar, no response has been received.

"We have all the reports in our favor and we are the ones responsible," President Adolfo Vilafranca emphasized last week, justifying the Consell's decision to move forward without waiting for UNESCO's final ruling on the report submitted last December. "Even the director of the Menorca Talayotic Agency, who is not suspected of having been placed there by us, has reported in favor," said Vice President Simón Gornés, puffing out his chest. He had just opened a can of worms. The storm has only just begun.

The director of the Agency, Antoni Ferrer, whom Gornès had challenged for the position two years earlier, resigned the following day, upset by the political and partisan use that had been made of his report. Despite his position, he was never invited to participate in the process, and in July of last year, he was only asked to report on the corrective measures proposed to reduce the viaduct's impact on the site. Ferrer lamented that other alternatives had not been studied, but endorsed that the proposal would "mitigate" the impact.

The Scientific Council of Talayotic Menorca, which included Cipriano Marín and Mónica Luengo, was also consulted about the heritage assessment report, which outlined measures to mitigate the bridge's impact on the site. With 15 votes in favor, one abstention, and two votes against, one of them from Marín, it also ended up approving it.

The PP government's public conclusion is that both the director of the Menorca Talayotic Agency and the Scientific Council have reported in favor of the proposed technical solution of completing the Rafal Rubí viaduct. But the reality is that they only considered the corrective measures. "There has been an incomprehensible and inappropriate use of our functions," the coordinator of the candidacy complained in his resignation letter. He regrets that, "after this long period" of two years since the declaration, the Scientific Council has only been convened to discuss "the Rafal Rubí issue and not to address other issues, showing no interest in our mission."

A year ago, the current Minister of Culture, Joan Pons Torres, had already removed Cipriano Marín from the Governing Council, the only body with any executive power over Talayotic Menorca, and had excluded, without warning, two other experts from the Scientific Council. Curiously, these are Rafael Mata and Felipe Criado, the two landscape architects who had collaborated on the success of the candidacy, but who had also been part of the evaluation committee that chose Ferrer as director of the Agency over Simón Gornés. Furthermore, he appointed Marín to the Governing Council with a more similar expert, the current head of the history and archaeology section of the Menorcan Institute of Studies (IME), Amalia Pérez-Juez.

The opposition PSOE and Més por Menorca did not hesitate to demand the minister's "immediate resignation" for having "distorted" and used the technical reports "in a partisan manner." Left-wing politicians and technicians, some of them members of the advisory bodies of Talayotic Menorca, also spoke out in support of Ferrer and Marín, while the PP and Alaior City Council came out in defense of the island government.

"Private Interests"

But it was the GOB that put its finger on the "scandal" issue. It recalled that the organizer of the visits to the Rafal Rubí site is Rafa Duran, a historian and former Palma City Council member for the People's Party (PP) and a close associate of Minister Gornés. Environmentalists criticize the investment of €6.5 million of public money to complete the Rafal Rubí bridge, when this project "should, in any case, be financed by private developers," and accuse the Consell of having designed the bridge to serve "private interests." In the opinion of environmentalists, a viaduct at this intersection is not justified when, on other similar sections of the main road, roundabouts or at-grade solutions have been chosen that equally guarantee road safety.

Rafa Duran was consulted in the preparation of the heritage impact report that approved the viaduct, which for him is "the best solution to guarantee the safety of Rafal Rubí." He has also launched various companies with which he manages cultural venues on the island, some of them included in the Talayotic Menorca. In addition to the Fortaleza de la Mola, which he previously assumed, he is in charge of Rafal Rubí, the Torralba de Salort table, and Binissuès.

Specifically, in these two years, the approval of the custody contracts that must regulate the conditions of visits to the World Heritage sites, the vast majority of which are privately owned, has been pending. The work must be completed by Ferrer's successor, who must still remain in office, despite having resigned, until the end of October, to give the Administration time to find a replacement. The Agency will also need to be staffed, as, since its creation and subsequent World Heritage declaration, Antoni Ferrer has been the only public employee exclusively assigned to its management. Until the very last moment, he says, he insisted on having the necessary staff to move forward with the custodianship contracts and other department initiatives. However, while work is about to begin on converting the annex to the Island Council headquarters in Ciutadella into the future Talayotic Menorca Interpretation Center, the successful contractor who will be in charge of the Rafal Rubí Bridge project will also be announced in September. With the World Heritage declaration in hand, Menorca has put the cart before the horse.